I. Overview
Article 8 of the Standardization Law of the People's Republic of China[1] provides that: the state shall actively promote participation in international standardization activities, carry out international cooperation and exchanges in standardization, participate in the formulation of international standards, adopt international standards in light of national conditions, and promote the conversion and application of Chinese standards with foreign standards.
The degree of consistency between national standards and corresponding international standards is divided into three categories: equivalence, modification, and non-equivalence[2].
Equivalence adoption means:
the technical content and text structure of the national standard and the international standard are the same, but may contain minimal editorial modifications; modification adoption means:
the requirements of the national standard are less than those of the international standard, and only some of the optional contents of the international standard are adopted; the requirements of the national standard are more than those of the international standard, and the content or types are increased, including additional tests; the national standard and the international standard have some of the same contents, but both contain requirements that are different from the other; the national standard adds a clause of equal status to the corresponding international standard clause as another option to the international standard clause.
Non-equivalence adoption means:
the technical content and text of the national standard and the international standard only retain a small number or insignificant international standard clauses. Non-equivalent national standards do not fall within the scope of adopting international standards.
In the past ten years, the weighing instrument product standards formulated by our industry have basically directly adopted the relevant international recommendations, or at least modified them. Some product standards even directly copied the "report page" in the international recommendations.
2. What are international advanced standards
1. International standards
International standards include: standards formulated by the International Committee for Standardization (ISO), standards formulated by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), standards formulated by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), and standards formulated by international organizations confirmed and announced by the International Organization for Standardization, including the "International Organization of Legal Metrology".
2. International advanced standards
In order to improve product quality and technical level and improve the competitiveness of products in the international market, enterprises can adopt foreign advanced standards when there are no corresponding international standards or international standards are not applicable.
The foreign advanced standards currently recognized by national standardization organizations are:
⑴Standards formulated by regional organizations:
Standards formulated by organizations such as the European Committee for Standardization (CEN), the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC), the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UN/ECE), the Pan American Technical Standards Committee (COPANT), and the Arab Organization for Standardization and Metrology (ASMO).
⑵ National standards of developed countries:
Standards formulated by organizations such as the American National Standard (ANSI), the German National Standard (DIN), the British National Standard (BS), the French National Standard (NF), the Japanese Industrial Standard (JIS), and the Russian National Standard (GOCT).
⑶ Industry/professional group standards:
Standards formulated by organizations such as the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), the American Petroleum Institute (API), the Underwriters Laboratories (UL), the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), the German Association of Electrical Engineers (VDE), the British Institute of Petroleum (IP), and the British Lloyd's Register (LR). The advanced foreign standards for the weighing instrument industry that we have come into contact with so far mainly include: the "44 Manual" [12] issued by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) of the United States, the directives (MID, NAWI) issued by the European Union,
III. How to adopt international recommendations
1. The essence of international recommendations
The international recommendations formulated by the International Organization of Legal Metrology are actually an international metrology regulation, the main contents of which are "metrology requirements", "metrology control", and "test procedures", and the "technical requirements" are the items formulated to ensure the "metrology requirements". The “technical requirements” stipulated in the international recommendations are far from sufficient if used to guide production by manufacturers.
⑴ R76 “Non-automatic weighing instruments” [4] covers mechanical and electronic non-automatic weighing instruments ranging from a few grams to hundreds of grams, with accuracy levels ranging from special accuracy level, high accuracy level, medium accuracy level to ordinary accuracy level. If such a verification procedure can be used to complete the metrological performance test of all products, it is already a stretch. However, it is even more impossible to use one or more product standards to guide enterprises to produce weighing instruments of many specifications.
⑵ As for the international recommendations on automatic weighing instruments, since each of them contains a variety of different specifications and types of products (see Table 1), it is very difficult to use one product standard to cover all specifications and models of products.